LITMIR.BIZ

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of a ship? Yes, and—he was wearing only a pair of shorts—what had happened to his wet suit? Additionally, there was a piece of duct tape over his mouth, and his wrists were bound together behind his back—also with duct tape. The deck beneath his cheek was vibrating, a deep, throbbing thrum, and a cold, damp wind was stirring across his naked skin.

      He remembered now. He was on board the megayacht Bibi Lilith. And, apparently, the yacht was no longer riding at anchor just outside the marina. She was now under way, heading at full speed out to sea.

      Careful to move nothing else, he opened his eyes. Still dark. Apparently not much time had elapsed since he’d been caught trying to plant a Trojan horse chip in the engine control computer.

      The chip. Where’s the damned chip?

      They’d stripped him down to his shorts, and the packet had been tucked inside his wet suit. They’d found it—had to have found it. And were probably at that very moment trying to figure out what it was and what he’d intended to do with it. It was, he reasoned, probably the only reason they hadn’t killed him yet. They’d want to know what damage he’d done, who had sent him, how much he knew. His heart thumped and his skin crawled at the thought of the means they might be planning to employ to extract that information from him before they killed him and threw his body overboard.

      Overboard. Well, hell. That was the reason the yacht was heading out to sea. They’d want to be in deep water when they dumped him.

      It took only a few seconds for his senses to gather all this information, and for his brain to process it. After that, his brain wasted a good bit more time skittering around trying to figure a way out of the situation he was in. The only thing that activity produced was the conclusion that his prospects weren’t good. He was alone on this mission, without backup, vastly outnumbered, and what weapons or means of calling for help he’d had were on his belt, which had been removed from him along with his wet suit.

      Looking on the bright side, he was alive, at least for the moment. And, they hadn’t gone too far offshore yet. The lights of L.A. were still visible out there, rising and falling on the horizon. If he could make it to the water, he might have a chance. A small one, for sure, but it beat the hell out of anything that could happen to him if he stayed on this boat.

      I have to make it to the water….

      He moved experimentally and heard a mutter of voices respond immediately from somewhere nearby but beyond his line of vision. The voices were speaking something other than English. Arabic? Persian?

      He heard the scuff of footsteps, and a dark shape bent over him. He moaned, again as an experiment, and was rewarded with a vicious kick in the ribs for his trouble. Another voice spoke, and Roy felt himself jerked roughly to his feet. The tape was ripped cruelly from his mouth.

      He stood swaying, licking his stinging lips as the dark shapes closed in around him. Now? Shall I make a move now? His mind calculated the distance to the railing. Too far! Besides which, his legs still felt wobbly and his head was swimming. He’d never make it alive.

      While he was making that assessment, the line of dark shapes directly in front of Roy broke apart, and another shape moved into the gap. This man, obviously the one in charge, lifted a hand and drew long and deeply on a cigarette, briefly and faintly illuminating hawklike, angular features—good-looking in a dark-browed and bearded sort of way. I’ll know him, Roy thought. If I live to see him again, I’ll know him.

      “Who do you work for?” The words coming at him from out of the darkness were spits of sound—short and sharp, but deadly, like the sounds a gun makes when it has been equipped with a silencer. “Why are you here?”

      “I don’t…work for anybody…except myself,” Roy said, with what he hoped were convincingly weak-sounding coughs. “Figured…a yacht like this…there’s gotta be something worth stealing—”

      A fist thudded without warning into his stomach. He doubled over, retching feebly. Lights ricocheted inside his skull.

      “Wrong answer,” the staccato voice said calmly. “If you wanted to steal you would have been upstairs, in the salon, or the staterooms. What were you doing outside the control room? Answer me correctly this time, or the next thing to hit your stomach will be a bullet.”

      Roy considered his options and kept his mouth shut.

      His interrogator shrugged as he drew once more on his cigarette, then tossed it over the railing. Roy watched the reddish spark arc downward and out of sight, like a short-lived shooting star.

      “It doesn’t matter,” the interrogator said in his curiously passionless voice. “I know who you are. You are an agent of the United States government. You are trespassing on this yacht. The computer chip you were carrying with you will be analyzed and your intentions will be discovered. But in any case, whatever you were sent to do, you have failed. Whatever else you may have left behind, it will be found.” He gestured to the other shapes. “Take care of him.”

      Roy’s heart lurched as he heard the unmistakable jangle of heavy chain from somewhere close behind him. Whatever I do, I can’t let them put that chain on me.

      Still clinging to the guise of casual and inept thief, Roy whined, “Wait! What—what are you doing? Hold on a minute! Jeez! What’s with you guys? What ever happened to calling the cops?”

      The interrogator paused to look back, and a light from somewhere on the yacht’s upper decks caught and illuminated his smile. “Police ask too many questions.” The voice now sounded almost gentle. “This is much simpler. Cleaner. Nothing of you will ever be found…no evidence. Fewer questions.” He turned to continue on his way.

      Roy shook away the nearest of his captors and lurched toward the interrogator, calling out, “Wait—dammit!” as if he were bent on pleading his case, arguing for his life.

      It was a desperate gamble, but the deception gave him the split second he needed. For that split second his captors froze expectantly, and he surged past them on a wave of pure adrenaline, veering instead toward the ship’s railing.

      The railing loomed ahead of him, an impossible distance away. He focused on it and ran…no, dove for it—his legs didn’t seem to touch the deck. An awkward half crouch was all he could manage with his hands secured behind his back. As he lurched forward, he heard angry exclamations from behind him. Then shouts. He plowed on, every nerve in his body humming, every muscle spasming in expectation of the brutal slam of bullets into his flesh.

      The railing was there, right in front of him. He struck it hard, then arched and twisted his torso up and over, and he was falling, falling free through the darkness. From far, far away, he heard the crackle of gunfire, the zing of bullets slicing past him, the hiss and spit as they hit the water.

      He felt a searing, burning sensation slam into his side and knife through his chest and had time for only one thought: Oh, hell, I’m hit!

      The black Pacific swell rose up to swallow him.

      The cold…

      Roy had never been so cold. Being a Southern boy, born and bred, Lord, how he hated to be cold.

      But, at least he was alive, and at the moment, being cold was the least of his worries. For starters, he was alone in a vast, dark ocean, although maybe the alone part wasn’t altogether a bad thing, considering the company he’d just left. At first, he’d feared his erstwhile captors might turn the yacht around and come to search for him to finish him off—maybe even launch one of the outboards. The moment of euphoria he’d felt when he’d realized they weren’t going to do that was short. Clearly, his would-be killers were confident the sea could be counted on to complete what they’d started. They didn’t even consider it worth their trouble to make certain.

      Taking stock of his current circumstances, he could see their point. He was shot and bleeding profusely, miles from shore, in an ocean full of sharks. With his hands taped together. Behind him. It was, he thought, one of those Perils of Pauline cliff-hanger moments, where it looked as if things couldn’t possibly get any worse.

      Except

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